Guest post by Diane Ní Cheallacháin: Catholic schools and othering

Diane reported this horrible practice in a comment at Atheist Ireland on Facebook. It’s one I hadn’t heard of before – a creative and sadistic way to make children feel the sharp pain of exclusion from bliss for not being part of the religious in-crowd. I’m sharing it with her permission.

Jayzus at the amount of time spent arguing with the local primary school to no avail re parties for those who ‘sang at yesterdays’ communion, mass’ etc. when the ‘school’ specifically stated it doesn’t discriminate: explain to me why X goes home in tears because s/he was excluded from the party because of not being Catholic Enough. It’s also blatantly hollow to encourage/reward children with treats to gain religious brownie points. Shouldn’t the reward be implicit by having the One True Religion? (I was calm, honestly, and this is FB so an abbreviated version of events.) [Read more…]

Collecting reactions

A fabulously useful resource from South Asia Citizens Web: a list of responses to Penguin’s withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s book in India, with many quoted in full.

The Indian Express February 12

…

Prominent sections of the establishment in India have long abdicated their commitment to a defence of the written word, forsaking the liberal strategy of allowing a text to be contested legally — and legally alone — on whatever grouse, and instead even abetting intimidation as a tool for bringing censorship. It is to India’s shame that it was the first country to ban Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Since then, through the vandalisation that hounded a scholarly biography of Shivaji out of circulation, the message has been clear.

The recent withdrawal by Oxford University Press and Delhi University of an essay by A.K. Ramanujan was a capitulation to expressions of intolerance by rightwing Hindutva groups similar to those aflutter about Doniger’s analysis. [Read more…]

Giving the shirt too

Credit where it’s due – an archbishop in CAR is warning of genocide and he’s not just worrying about the Christian victims. Astonishing but true.

A Central African bishop has reported signs of genocide in the growing conflict there, urging an effective security response and warning against the “evil” desire to kill and destroy.

“If there is no one to hold back the hand of the devil here, he will achieve his goal. Many people will be hunted down and killed,” Archbishop Dieudonnè Nzapalainga of Bangui told Aid to the Church in Need Feb. 12.

He said he had visited a town called Bodango, about 125 miles from the capital of Bangui, where all of the Muslims – who are among those targeted in the conflict – have disappeared. Members of the Anti-Balaka militia told him the Muslims had been driven out, but the archbishop was skeptical, fearing instead that they had all been killed. [Read more…]

Nostalgia for Little Rock in 1956

Ignorant student society proudly announces its rejection of what it ignorantly calls “PM’s call to ban gender segregation” – ignorantly because it’s far from exclusive to the PM and in fact he caught up days after many other people and organizations had issued the same call.

Ignorant student society proudly announces its view that students should decide how societies are run, including segregating any way they want to.

The society is SUARTS, the Students’ Union of University of the Arts London. [Read more…]

Strong bars on strong cages

Jennifer Collins at Religion News reports on Ireland’s little problem with Catholic saturation of the public state-funded schools.

The Catholic Church runs 90 percent of primary schools in Ireland. The rest are mainly Protestant, and about 4 percent are managed by the nonprofit Educate Together, which is nonsectarian.

The arrangement is unsettling to some parents who have little choice in where to send their children. [Read more…]